Native American Tribe To Air Anti-Redskins Ad During NBA Finals

On Monday, we learned that Washington, D.C.'s National Football League team had hired a group of lobbyists -- specifically, McGuireWoods Consulting -- to help it in its continually inane public relations battle to keep its racist name. The move raised a lot of questions, such as, "Is this a referendum on Lanny Davis' ability as a crisis consultant?" and "McGuireWoods Consulting knows that they don't have to take everybody's money, right?"

Well, perhaps Dan Snyder, who owns Washington's football team, needs all the help he can get. During Tuesday night's broadcast of Game 3 of the NBA Finals, California's Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation will be running a brutally effective ad that unifies a nation of Native Americans and pretty much settles the debate over whether anything that's not a potato would be "honored" to be called a "redskin."

Watch:

According to The Washington Post's Theresa Vargas, this ad "will air in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, San Francisco and Washington." Those in Miami who tuned in to watch Game 2 of the Finals already saw the spot during halftime.

The ad runs at a time when both the pressure being applied to Snyder to change the team's name is intensifying and Snyder's responses are proving to be more hapless. Toward the end of May, 50 U.S. senators sent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter urging him to show some character and endorse a name change. Snyder's crack PR team added to their list of super-genius moves by initiating a hashtag campaign on Twitter against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It did not go as planned!

On top of all that, one of the central myths that had underpinned the idea that "redskin" is an honorific fell apart in recent weeks. As ThinkProgress' Travis Waldron reported at the end of May, a 1933 Associated Press interview with the team's founding owner, George Preston Marshall, revealed that the team did not, in fact, change its name from "Braves" to the slur it currently uses to "honor" William "Lone Star" Dietz. (By the way, Lone Star Dietz: not a Native American!)

As Marshall told AP some 80 years ago, "So much confusion has been caused by our football team wearing the same name as the Boston National League baseball club ... that a change appeared to be absolutely necessary. The fact that we have in our head coach, Lone Star Dietz, an Indian, together with several Indian players, has not, as may be suspected, inspired me to select the name Redskins."

So Marshall actually went out of his way to let people know that he wasn't "honoring" any Native Americans with the team's name. He clearly didn't want any confusion on that regard. Though, let's face it, the fact that he gave his team a racial slur as a name was probably a pretty good clue.

The late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) loosely said the "N-word" on "Fox News Sunday" in 2001, while discussing the state of race relations in the United States.

In a WPIX interview in 2012, East Haven, Conn. Mayor Joe Maturo (R) was asked what he would do for the Latino community. Maturo replied, "I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet."

In 2011, Texas state Sen. Larry Taylor (R) made a culturally insensitive remark while speaking at a hearing regarding an insurance company paying policy holders in a timely manner.
"Don't nitpick, don't try to Jew them down," Taylor said.

Recordings from Richard Nixon's presidency recovered in 2009 revealed that Nixon thought abortion was necessary "when you have a black and a white ... or a rape."

In 2010, South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts (R) referred to President Barack Obama and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) as "ragheads."
BuzzFeed released footage of the incident in 2012.

In 2006, former Florida state Rep. Ralph Arza (R) was accused by Bruno Barreiro of calling a school superintendent a "negro mierda," meaning "black piece of sh--" in English.
Arza resigned and faced criminal charges after spouting threats and racial slurs such as "n---er" in a drunken voicemail to Barreiro.

While campaigning in 2006, former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) referred to an Indian-American as "macaca," a slur typically directed to Africans.

While speaking to reporters on a campaign bus in 2000, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used the slur "gooks" while condemning the Vietnamese prison guards who tortured him.
"I hate the gooks," McCain said. "I will hate them as long as I live."

While serving as a Missouri senator, Truman referred to waiters who served at the White House as an "army of coons" in a letter addressed to his daughter. In a letter to his wife in 1939, Truman used the phrase "n---er picnic day."

The book "Game Change" by reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, published in 2010, revealed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made some racial remarks in reference to Obama during his 2008 campaign.
The passage in the book reads:
"[Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately."
Reid apologized for the comments in a statement released in January 2010.
"I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans, for my improper comments," Reid said.

During a campaign stop in Iowa in 2012, former Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made a controversial reference to black people while discussing welfare programs.
CBS News quoted Santorum saying he didn't want to make "black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."
"I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families," Santorum said.
Santorum later claimed that he was "tongue-tied" and did not remember using the word "black," according to CNN.

Twelve years before he was elected to be House majority whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke at a conference hosted by the white supremacist group European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Scalise said he was unaware in 2002 when he accepted the invitation that the group was affiliated with racists and neo-Nazi activists.